Mr Plough

hmm. i think this can only be caused by the way ive constructed my window. i dont use forms, and am drawing directly to the main window which is set to WS_EX_TRANSPARENT and WS_EX_LAYERED. msdn doesnt mention any limitations, and all the functions return OK. i dont really get the SetLayeredWindowAttributes() function. the colorkey setting works fine, but if you set it to LWA_ALPHA with 0 opacity, anything you draw on the window is invisible regardless of alpha. if you set it to anything other than 0, you lose the transparency of the window. and it STILL ignores anything other than fully transparent! the idea is to get full alpha control on a transparent desktop overlay, much the same as Menge's app (although im not making a dock). should i be using forms and controls and such?

i dont doubt u dood, i just cant get the f*@£ing thing to work. I loaded your ring.png file, just in case im making the file wrong - Bitmap image(L"ring.png"); graphics.DrawImage(&image,x,y); and it rendered the centre transparent, but the edges are NOT blended. I cant post the image because my web space is down at the moment. If you can tell me what im doing wrong, please do so.

Nice app! Seems to be written in DirectX 9. I'll be happy to be corrected tho.

Get a book for Max4 rather than Max5. As a beginner it won't matter, the fundamentals are the same. The 'Inside 3d Studio Max' books are quite good, and will probably be fairly cheap now that max5 is out.

.png supports 256 levels of transparency, but it doesnt show an alpha 'channel' in photoshop. i tried loading one using gdi+ and it ignores all but full transparency. which makes it about as usefull as a gif. whether this is a gdi+ limitation or me being crap remains to be seen :P

wierd considering it supposedly supports per pixel alpha. I guess i could load the alpha channel as a greyscale bitmap and use it to set the alpha manually. hmm........

ARGB BMPs do yes. .png files dont, they have transparency like gifs. im starting to dislike this gdi+ thing.....

hi, im trying to display an image using its embedded alpha as transparency. but it seems to ignore the alpha channel. i thought this would be automatic, but apparently not im using a 32bpp ARGB .bmp file Bitmap image(L"blah.bmp"); graphics.DrawImage(image,x,y); ive trawled through msdn and all the gdi+ tuts i can find but they only mention using matrices to set a uniform alpha across the whole image. I did manage to find a tutorial for doing using standard gdi, but that kinda defeats the whole point. thanks. Mr Plough.